Photo Gallery

Willie Nelson

Biography
by Hal Erickson

Texas born-and-bred musical legend Willie Nelson cracked into showbiz as a disc jockey in Fort Worth. He went on to join the Ray Price band, writing tunes for Price as well as a slew of other artists (Nelson's the man who penned Patsy Cline's signature tune "Crazy"). Fronting his own group, The Outlaws, Nelson played the tanktown and honky-tonk circuit before scoring with his 1975 hit "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain." In 1979, he made a laudable film debut as Robert Redford's sidekick in The Electric Horseman; one year later, he starred in the C&W "Intermezzo" clone Honeysuckle Rose (1980), for which he also wrote the score, including the chartbuster "On the Road Again." Nelson's acting resumé includes several made-for-TV westerns, among them 1990's A Pair of Aces and its 1992 sequel, and a 1987 remake of Stagecoach; he also appeared as "himself"--and a very weather-beaten self it was--in a 1995 TV-movie biopic of country star Dottie West. Nelson has been awarded five Grammy Awards, and in the early 1980s he organized the annual Farm Aid Benefit, which earned him a Special Humanitarian Award.